James 1:1-18

James 1 English Standard Version (ESV)
Greeting
1 James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ,
To the twelve tribes in the Dispersion:
Greetings.

Testing of Your Faith
2 Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, 3 for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. 4 And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.
5 If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him. 6 But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind. 7 For that person must not suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord; 8 he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.
9 Let the lowly brother boast in his exaltation, 10 and the rich in his humiliation, because like a flower of the grass he will pass away. 11 For the sun rises with its scorching heat and withers the grass; its flower falls, and its beauty perishes. So also will the rich man fade away in the midst of his pursuits.
12 Blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial, for when he has stood the test he will receive the crown of life, which God has promised to those who love him. 13 Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am being tempted by God,” for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one. 14 But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. 15 Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death.
16 Do not be deceived, my beloved brothers. 17 Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. 18 Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures.

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Welcome to the book of James.  You'll notice that this book has a different greeting.  It's specifically written to the Jewish Christians (Messianic Jews) who have been run out of Jerusalem and dispersed all over the Roman empire.  That means this book is going to take on a slightly different flavor than the others, but it doesn't mean that it doesn't have anything to say to those of us that are Gentile believers because we too should have true faith that is validated by our works (our "fruit" should match our "root.")

James is writing to a group of people going through severe persecution because of their ethnicity, their faith, and their politics.  Instead of trying to encourage them with platitudes like, "this is only temporary," James tells them to be joyful about getting to experience various trials because they result in a stronger faith   All we need to do when we don't know how to make it through from day to day is to turn to God and ask Him to provide everything we need to make it through and He will be faithful to provide.  When we ask though we must ask believing that God hears us and wants to give us what we need and will do so in His time.  If we ask expecting nothing, then we should get what we expected--nothing.

James is combating the idea that good believers only experience blessings from God and never go through challenging times.  This was the view of that time...if you were having trouble in your life, you were somehow being punished for what you did, or maybe even for generational sins that your family committed, but ever "bad" thing that happened to you was someone's fault.  James flipped this idea on its head and said that we should look at those in such "lowly" places in their lives (poor, homeless, jobless, etc) as being exalted in the eyes of God because they have to learn to depend on Him more on a daily basis.  The rich man that has everything he could ever need and only learns to depend on himself is usually the most unhappy man in the world and seeks pleasure and often has a short life because of it.  Ultimately trouble comes and he doesn't know how to deal with it.  His faith is not strong and he withers away and dies (maybe this is picture of him denying his faith, or maybe it a picture of him actually giving up on life when it gets hard).

These Christians were being dragged in front of earthly judges and kings being asked to recant and deny that Jesus was God and that Jesus was King.  James reminds them that their reward in heaven is for those who are faithful to the end.  None of their trials are coming directly from God, but God is using their trials and temptations to produce character and faith in them.  We are each tempted to do evil by our own sin nature (our "flesh") as we desire naturally to do what is against God.  No one has to teach us how to sin or make us want to do it.  The end result of giving into temptation is sin and the end result of sin is death--both spiritual death where we out of fellowship with God and physical death as most sin is destructive to our minds and our bodies.  God's law is there to protect us.

God doesn't cause us to do evil, but He instead is the source of every good thing in our lives, the most important of which is His Son Jesus who is a "firstfruits" where we can look to Jesus and say that if God let His Son go through terrible suffering to bring glory to Himself, why should we expect anything less for ourselves, but the Father was pleased to raise up His Son for all of his accusers and oppressors to see that He was victorious over sin and death and we one day too should expect to be raised up to eternal life victorious through the finished work of Jesus Christ for all the world to see that God really did love us and was faithful to us even when we weren't always faithful to Him and that He has accepted us even when they did not.  We can find great comfort in this whenever we are going through hard times, but especially when we are being persecuted because of our faith which is much more likely to start happening as we approach the end times.